Why does First Man call it ‘Geminee’?

NASA explains Gemini jargon. Sorta.

So which is it? How do you pronounce Gemini?

In First Man, the new film about Neil Armstrong and the moon landing, astronauts and NASA officials say “GEM-uh-knee.” But the first pronunciation in the Webster’s New World College Dictionary Fifth Edition, the standard work used by The New York Times to settle such matters, is GEM-uhneye," which is the way many of us say it.

Really, though, which is right?

The 10 crewed missions of the Gemini program, with capsules that carried two people into space in 1965 and 1966, never got the attention that the programs before and after it received. Mercury and the seven original astronauts had Tom Wolfe as chronicler in The Right Stuff. Apollo had the triumph of the Moon landing, the tragedy of Apollo 1 and the nail-biting return of crippled Apollo 13.

Gemini, by contrast, is the middle child of the early space program, eager to please but apt to be ignored. And when it comes to saying the name aloud, there has always been some knee-eye confusion. In The New York Times, a seemingly authoritative 1965 article tried to resolve the “running debate” with a statement from NASA that the proper pronunciation is “‘Jiminy,’ as in ‘Jiminy Cricket.’”

On Tuesday, Bob Jacobs, a spokesman for NASA, said the “knee” pronunciation is part of the agency’s culture, and serves almost as an insider’s shibboleth — a word whose proper delivery identifies you as someone in the know. “If you get it right,” he said, “you’re part of the space club.” He likened it to the Nashville street Demonbreun, which is pronounced DaMUN-bree-un, and not like what some have characterized as “demon pickle juice.” Jacobs also suggested the pronunciation could have to do with the early space program’s Southernness, in the way that “every pilot speaks like Chuck Yeager.”

And yet it wasn’t always so clear, said Bill Barry, the space agency’s chief historian. Back in the time of the Gemini program, “it kind of depended who you were talking to, and what day of the week it was,” and even varied from NASA locations, he said.

For First Man, NASA arranged a meeting between the film’s star, Ryan Gosling, and Michael Collins, a member of the Apollo 11 crew. Barry asked Collins to resolve the question. “He kind of gets this twinkle in his eye,” he recalled. “He used the word ‘Gemini’ twice in his answer — and he pronounced it both ways.”

As for the filmmakers, Barry said he suggested to them that for the sake of clarity, they pick one pronunciation and stick with it. “From my perspective, from 50 years later, whichever you want to use is fine.”